The matter is now set to be closed after officials told the New Zealand management they had no queries regarding Pakistan's conduct in the field.

It was at the Oval in 2006 that Pakistan became the first side in history to forfeit a Test match when they refused to take the field after Australian umpire Darrell Hair, supported by his West Indian colleague Billy Doctrove, penalised them five runs for ball-tampering.

Former Test leg-spinner Alam was adamant Gul's feat had been achieved by entirely proper means.

"He's quick and his action makes a lot of difference."

New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori on Tuesday confirmed that discussions had taken place with umpires Mark Benson, Rod Tucker and match referee Ranjan Madugalle.

"I think it's important to note the position we were in when Gul came on in the 12th over. We were well and truly behind the game; Pakistan were dominating and were likely to go on to win," said Vettori whose team face Sri Lanka in Nottingham on Tuesday needing to win to reach the semi-finals.

"The amount of reverse swing that we saw was new to us, and therefore we raised a couple of concerns with the on-field umpires and the match referee.

"They relayed back to us that they had no issues at all with the state of the ball. We accepted that - and now we move on to our important game against Sri Lanka.

Vettori is aware how thorny an issue it is to imply ball-tampering.

"We don't even want to use those words - because even if you state something so simple, that's the jump people make," he said.

"It was done in a professional manner. We got our answers - and we moved on."